Mitten,
From today's Evening Standard
Fourth pilot dies in crash
by Tim Finan in France
The British pilot of a Second World War Spitfire died instantly after his plane crashed at an air display in northern France. He is the fourth Briton to die in three days while flying in a vintage warplane.
Tens of thousands of spectators at Vallée de Seine airport, near Rouen, saw the Spitfire piloted by Martin Sargeant, from Goud-hurst, Kent, plummet to the ground in a field.
Eye-witnesses saw black smoke coming from its engines seconds before it crashed late yesterday afternoon.
At the Biggin Hill air-show in Kent on Saturday, retired Air Marshal Sir Kenneth Hayr, 66, from Warwickshire, a former Deputy Chief of Defence Staff and his co-pilot Jonathon Kerr, an electronics engineer from Bournemouth, died when their 1950s De Havilland Vampire jet fighter crashed.
On Sunday at the same airshow a British Airways captain and former Red Arrows pilot died when his Second World War plane nosedived during a display above Biggin Hill.
Guy Bancroft-Wilson, 43, died instantly when his US Bell King Cobra spiralled out of control at the Kent airfield and exploded in a fireball in front of the 5,000-seat main stand.
Commenting on yesterday's accident a spokesman at Rouen airport said French spectators were "deeply saddened" by the Spitfire crash as it was "an heroic survivor of the war".
French sources put the cause of the tragedy down to mechanical failure and air accident investigators have launched an inquiry.
The plane was one of 12 Spitfires, eleven British and one French-owned, which were taking part in a flypast as part of the airshow.